Monday, February 8, 2016

HOMELESSNESS HAS TO BE THE ELECTION ISSUE

The fastest growing economy in
Europe. New jobs being created every week. Cranes once again stalking the Dublin
skyline. Even Dun Laoghaire, poster town of the recession, has an air
of recovery about it with new shops opening regularly. Although many of us will be playing catch up
for decades to come, as we try to replace savings and pensions that were
decimated in the crash, until recently, I was relieved that the worst seemed to
be over.

Micheal Noonan said the emergency is over. I knew things weren’t perfect. I was aware of a homeless crisis but thought
the government had it in hand with their plans for modular housing as an
emergency solution. I thought we were
doing alright, until I watched the recent RTE documentary “My Homeless
Family”. Rarely has a programme made me
so angry.

Using their own voices and most
poignantly the voices and the tears of their children, these brave women (and
it was mainly women) clearly illustrated just who have paid the price for our
recovery. Living in self-described ‘posh
prisons or cages’ the pressure being exerted on these families every day is
incredible and the documentary made for surprisingly hard viewing. I wondered
why and then I realised it was because we were watching ourselves. These families are every family; just like us
they battled to keep their kids amused, they supervised homework and celebrated
birthdays in their collapsed tiny worlds.
It could so easily have been any of us.

Lone parent, Erica and her daughter
Emily have a bond that is strong and familiar.
I recognised it just I recognised Erica’s fear for the future as she
tries her best to provide for her child.
I was a lone parent for ten years and it was only a twist of fate that meant
I had a supportive family with room for me and my daughter to live at home
until I could afford to move out on my own.
But I know Erica’s dreams. I dreamed them too. A house we could call our own; where she could
have her own bedroom. Where she could
have more space to play. Where she could
invite her friends over after school. Erica’s
pain although sharper was familiar. I
was just lucky. But I could have easily
been in her situation.

The women who generously let us
view their lives in an intimate way, instinctively understand that a secure,
safe, place to call home is essential to children’s development and to family
life. A home is not just a roof over
one’s head and a bed to sleep in, it’s much more. The writer and essayist, Samuel Johnson said “to be happy at home is the ultimate result
of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of
which every desire prompts the prosecution”. How can these families achieve any of their
ambitions living in such tiny spaces and with no security of tenure?

Over the coming fortnight we will
all be bombarded with how brilliant the Government were in rescuing this
country and dragging us back from the brink of disaster. Yes, they did take control of the finances
and restore some order to them. But the
recovery belongs to the people, all of us who suffered cuts to our incomes and
increases in our taxes. Austerity has been
very brutal and almost all of us have paid a heavy price.

But the highest price has been paid
by those who are vulnerable; families on very low incomes or social welfare and
lone parents. These people, families just like ours have been sacrificed in the
name of this recovery. Families who now have
nowhere to call home, through no fault of their own.

The blame for this does not merely
lie with the current government. For decades’
successive governments abandoned the policy of building social houses.
Somewhere along the way our Governments went from running a country to merely
running an economy.

For many (not all) involved in
politics it’s a game. It is a game
created by men and still dominated by men, with a very male energy running
through it and like any game it is all about winning. Keeping your seat at all
costs.

But politics is not a game. It is the art of caring for the people of the
country. The women on My Homeless Family
knew that. Having been stripped of that
most basic right in life – a place to call home from which to build proper
lives for themselves and their children, they are now doubly
disadvantaged. If this republic means
anything, it falls to the rest of us, to be their voice at the election. Homelessness must be front and centre of the
next programme for government. Otherwise
we are all complicit in their misery.